Starfleet Jedi

This is an analysis of the power of the Enterprise 1701's deflector beam - which will place a minimum limit upon the overall power generation capacity of 22nd century ships.

First, some relevant quotes from The Paradise Syndrome:

SPOCK: Prepare to beam us up, Mister Scott. We're warping out of orbit.
MCCOY: Leaving? You can't be serious, Spock.
SPOCK: Doctor, that asteroid is almost as large as your Earth's moon. Far enough away, the angle necessary to divert it enough to avoid destruction is minute, but as the asteroid approaches this planet, the angle becomes so great that even the power of a starship
MCCOY: The devil with an asteroid! It won't get here for two months, Spock!
SPOCK: If we arrive at the deflection point in time, it may not get here at all.
...
SPOCK: Prepare to activate deflectors.
SULU: Aye, sir.
CHEKOV: Power dropping, sir.
(The lights dim.)
SPOCK: Engineering, maintain full power. Full power.
SCOTT [OC]: Dilithium crystal circuit's failing, sir. We'll have to replace it.
SPOCK: Not now.
CHEKOV: Zero. Deflection point now, sir.
SPOCK: Activate deflectors.
(A beam shoots out and pulses against the big lump of rock.)
CHEKOV: Power dropping, sir.
SPOCK: Degree of deflection, Mister Sulu.
SULU: Not enough, Mister Spock. It's only point zero zero one three degrees.
...
SCOTT [OC]: Don't ask for anymore warp nine speeds, Mister Spock. Our star drive is completely burned out. The only thing we have left is impulse power.
SPOCK: Estimated repair time?
{Engineering]
SCOTT: Hanging here in space? Forever.
[Spock's quarters]
SCOTT [OC]: The only thing that'll fix these poor darlings is the nearest repair base.
SPOCK: I've already surmised that. Thank you, Mister Scott.
MCCOY: Well, Spock, you took your calculated risk in your calculated Vulcan way, and you lost. You lost for us, you lost for that planet, and you lost for Jim.
SPOCK: I accept the responsibility, Doctor.
MCCOY: And my responsibility is the health of this crew. You've been driving yourself too hard, and I want you to get some rest.
SPOCK: Mister Chekov, resume heading eight eight three mark four one.
MCCOY: Back to that planet? Without warp speed, it'll take months, Spock.
SPOCK: Exactly fifty nine point two two three days, Doctor, and that asteroid will be four hours behind us all the way.

So, the key data points are:
-the asteroid was almost as large as our moon. We may assume it has a mass of some 1e22 kg, which is a bit more than an eighth of the mass of Luna. That's pushing the meaning of the phrase "almost as large as," but it will make the math easier, and will give us a measure of conservatism.
-the asteroid was traveling almost as fast as the Enterprise at "maximum impulse." In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the newly refit Enterprise got from earth to Jupiter in 1.8 hours. That's a minimum of some 97,000,000 m/s. Assuming that the original Enterprise was only capable of reaching half that speed, the asteroid is moving at a speed of some 48,000,000 m/s or more.
-The Enterprise deflected it by some 0.0013 degrees.

What we need to find is the Delta-V (change in velocity) of the asteroid.

Now the formula for this situation is:

Delta-V = 4.8e7 m/s x 2 x sin(0.5 x 0.0013 degrees)
= 4.8e7 m/s x 2 x 0.00001134454014
= 4.8e7 m/s x 0.00002268928028
= 1089 m/s

So the constitution managed to accelerate the asteroid by around a kilometer per second. Somehow, this wasn't enough to get it out of the way, but if the planetary system had a complicated enough arrangement over these two months, there could be some sort of unique gravitational funneling effect. At any rate, the total energy imparted to the asteroid was well in excess of 1e25 J. Which means that the power of the TOS Enterprise is well in excess of a hundred billion terawatts.

EDIT: For some reason, I just multiplied the mass of the moon by the delta-V, when what I should have done is multiply the mass of the moon by the square of the delta-V. So the actual amount of energy the Enterprise imparted to the asteroid would have been on the order of 1e28 J, which puts us in the vicinity of a hundred trillion terawatts.

Well executed, but I do have an issue in that your calculation all hinges on the impulse velocity of the ship based on (basically) another ship with new and fully-operational drive system. That's how you get the velocity used to determine the acceleration imparted on the asteroid. In other words, i always assumed impulse was also not working well, here.

That said, your figure isn't terribly off-the-wall inasmuch as being on par with impact events like asteroid strikes and such, but it is also on par with a year's solar energy hitting Earth (with "on par" referring to an order of magnitude wiggle room).

I would be more keen on a more conservative approach, however. Something involving lower speed based on the trigonometric relationships versus relative sizes as a lower limit and a safety factor* as a more reasonable estimate.

(* How close could a moon-sized object pass Earth without causing extinction-level stress damage or orbital tomfoolery, even assuming a lower mass object as you did? )

Now, chances are that the lower limit and even the safety factor estimate will have issues, as I don't think the show ever suggests the object was visible from the planet. An onrushing moon most certainly should have been unless it was moving hella-fast and so would only show up right at the end. On the flip-side, with the lower limit estimate that only requires that the cue ball miss the 8 ball, I imagine two months and 0.0013 degrees will still result in a rather low velocity, but I could be wrong.

Come to think of it, it won't be a lower limit anyway. See, with .0013 degrees being inadequate, the only way to calculate it is to do so based on a figure where .0013 was adequate. The true distance and velocity would be something less than that.

2046 wrote:Well executed, but I do have an issue in that your calculation all hinges on the impulse velocity of the ship based on (basically) another ship with new and fully-operational drive system. That's how you get the velocity used to determine the acceleration imparted on the asteroid.

I cut it in half, and I don't see any reason to think that the refit Enterprise would be over twice the speed of the original Enterprise.

If we cut the original Enterprise's maximum impulse speed down to 4,800 km/s, or one twentieth of the refit Enterprise's maximum impulse, we still end up with a figure in the tens of billions of terawatts, if not higher.

EDIT: actually trillions of terawatts.

if we cut it down to 480 km/s, or one half of one percent of the refit Enterprise's maximum impulse, we still end up with a figure in the billions of terawatts.

EDIT: actually tens of billions of terawatts.

Much lower would imply that maximum impulse in the 2260s is relatively slow in comparison to the typical speeds of astronomical bodies, which i consider to be unreasonable due to the implied problems caused by warp speed near large gravity wells. If the maximum impulse speed of the original were lower than 100 km/s, then getting from Earth's orbit to Jupiter's orbit would take up the majority of the Enterprise's five year mission. Perhaps its speed could be limited to such (relatively) low values if there was something wrong with the impulse drive, but there is no explicit mention of any such issues in the episode.

Whatever way we slice it, the Enterprise from the original series had an energy output well into the billions of terawatts, likely in the tens or hundreds of billions of terawatts.

EDIT: Whatever way we slice it, the Enterprise from the original series had an energy output well into the tens of billions of terawatts, likely in the trillions or hundreds of trillions of terawatts.

In other words, i always assumed impulse was also not working well, here.

As I mentioned before, they don't explicitly state that something is wrong with the impulse engines.

I would be more keen on a more conservative approach, however. Something involving lower speed based on the trigonometric relationships versus relative sizes as a lower limit and a safety factor* as a more reasonable estimate.

(* How close could a moon-sized object pass Earth without causing extinction-level stress damage or orbital tomfoolery, even assuming a lower mass object as you did? )

To get it to just skim the atmosphere at 0.0013 degrees, you'd probably need to change its position at the time of "impact" by ~5,000,000 m.

So:

5,000,000 = 2x * sin(0.5*0.0013 degrees)
2,500,000 = x * sin(0.5*0.0013 degrees)
x = 2,500,000/sin(0.5*0.0013 degrees)
x = 2,500,000/0.00001134454014
x = 2.204e11 m

So the asteroid was, at a bare minimum, some 200,000,000 km away from the planet at the deflection point. Unfortunately, since it is heavily implied that more than 24 hours elapses between the attempt to deflect the asteroid and the attempt to cut it in half, we'll have to guess at its speed. However, if we assume that around a month passes between deflection and phasering, the asteroid's speed would be around 30 km/s.

This would still require some tens or hundreds of millions of terawatts to deflect. And since the asteroid doesn't necessarily need to hit the planet in order to cause a mass extinction, it seems safe to say that a figure on the order of a hundred million terawatts is an absolute lower limit on the power of the Enterprise 1701.

EDIT: somehow this one turned out to be alright, probably because when the speed of the asteroid goes down from tens of thousands of kilometers per second to tens of kilometers per second, we end up with a speed on the order of 1 m/s, so forgetting to square that doesn't change the value.

Another way to increase the "conservative factor" of any "Paradise Syndrome" calculations is to assume that the asteroid is far smaller than Spock describes it to Dr. McCoy. How do you do that? Look at the shape of the asteroid in question:



... a body "almost as large as your Earth's Moon" would be nearly spherical, assuming the same density, or even as we've seen with ice-rock bodies of even lower density Kuiper belt objects like Pluto and Sedona that would also fit Spock's description, they also are very spherical bodies. So to still make the asteroid big and threatening, a Vesta-sized object wouldn't be too out of bounds. At least this would be a way to do it, if you take visuals over dialog.
-Mike

I know that some people do indeed take visuals over dialogue, but I've never understood why.

At any rate, there are choices more consistent with canonical statements than the puny 2.6e20 kg Vesta. Haumea is hardly a sphere and it weighs in at some 4e21 kg.

Take a gander:


Given that there are naturally occurring materials in the Trek universe that are twenty times as hard as diamond (and, we can presume based on its use in starships, at least a hundred times less brittle), it's hardly unbelievable that a non-spherical asteroid with the right composition could be more than twice the size of Haumea.

Perhaps, but it is just a bit of a stretch to say that this asteroid (rogue planet, really if you go by the dialog alone) is made of tritanium or nitrium. Also Haumea is oblate, not lumpy, like the "Paradise Syndrome" rock, estimates of Haumea's mass sound impressive at first, but it is only 6% of our own Moon's mass, and while that might still fit with Spock's statement, it can still be used as a potential contradiction given that Spock have been both speaking of mass as well as linear dimensions. Also, keep in mind that Haumea's oblate shape may be dependent on its remarkably fast rotational period of 3.5 hours. The asteroid in TPS is not shown to be rotating, or at least not that much. Remember Spock is in a hurry and is doing only the bare minimum needed to explain the situation to McCoy (and by extension exposition to the audience). So it isn't too much of a stretch to say that Spock was combining the two things in one or two simple words.

As for the visuals over dialog, that has long been a tradition of the Versus Debates, set in part by Curtis Saxton his followers to take literally what we see on screen, even if it contradicts a character. And there are good reason to do that sometimes, such as when Kirk in "The Naked Time" says the Enterprise will burn up, yet when we see the ship at the end of the episode, both original and remastered FX, she looks pristine with no signs of damage. Or in Star Trek Into Darkness, Sulu says the same thing essentially, but the Alt-prise not only doesn't burn up, she handles things quite well given she was tumbling out of control at the time!

What argues against the asteroid being only a few km or a few dozen km wide is the phaser attack on the asteroid to split it in two:



The twin beams leave the Enterprise and are widening out at approximately 23 degree offset angles as the go, the reverse shot perspective makes it look like they are coming back together and are disappearing from view just before impact. So we are dealing with a rock that is at least 100 km wide, and more like a few hundred.
-Mike

Mike DiCenso wrote:Perhaps, but it is just a bit of a stretch to say that this asteroid (rogue planet, really if you go by the dialog alone) is made of tritanium or nitrium. Also Haumea is oblate, not lumpy, like the "Paradise Syndrome" rock,

It is a stretch to say that it's entirely composed of such materials, but it could easily have veins of tritanium running through it like a system of roots. They'd act like roots, and both anchor and support the ordinary rock surrounding them. As the asteroid is impacted by other asteroids on its trip through space, much of its surface gets blasted away by impact after impact, but those areas with veins of tritanium manage to hold together rather well thanks to the ridiculously tough framework. The tritanium framework would even hold up the lumps of normal rock against gravity, giving the surface of the asteroid a very bulbous appearance.

The result? Instead of a spherical body with craters left by previous impacts, we get a whole bunch of bulges. Exactly what we see in the visuals. Not that I consider that particularly important, as we shall see.

estimates of Haumea's mass sound impressive at first, but it is only 6% of our own Moon's mass, and while that might still fit with Spock's statement, it can still be used as a potential contradiction given that Spock have been both speaking of mass as well as linear dimensions. Also, keep in mind that Haumea's oblate shape may be dependent on its remarkably fast rotational period of 3.5 hours. The asteroid in TPS is not shown to be rotating, or at least not that much.

Even so, over a minute in time, we'd expect to have less than two degrees of rotation.

Remember Spock is in a hurry and is doing only the bare minimum needed to explain the situation to McCoy (and by extension exposition to the audience). So it isn't too much of a stretch to say that Spock was combining the two things in one or two simple words.

But surely someone as anal-retentive as Spock (who corrects almost every approximate numerical value mentioned in his presence) wouldn't exaggerate the size of the asteroid by more than an order of magnitude?

As for the visuals over dialog, that has long been a tradition of the Versus Debates, set in part by Curtis Saxton his followers to take literally what we see on screen, even if it contradicts a character. And there are good reason to do that sometimes, such as when Kirk in "The Naked Time" says the Enterprise will burn up, yet when we see the ship at the end of the episode, both original and remastered FX, she looks pristine with no signs of damage. Or in Star Trek Into Darkness, Sulu says the same thing essentially, but the Alt-prise not only doesn't burn up, she handles things quite well given she was tumbling out of control at the time!

I guess it's the principle of the notion that irks me. You can't treat a made-up story like a documentary! Especially not one that relies on special effects to any degree. What we have in the special effects isn't "what the script called for," but rather, "the closest approximation to some technician's interpretation of what the script called for that could be achieved on said technician's budget." If we take seriously what Star Wars and Star Trek ACTUALLY ARE, we will recognize that lines delivered tend to be a very close approximation of an author's artistic vision, whereas any special effects are going to be rather less successful approximations of the same vision - and thus, we will assume that the former will be a rather more reliable guide to the events of the story than the latter.

To sum up my position succinctly: if you expect me to believe that the computer interface in an FTL capable spaceship could be compared unfavorably to that of an Atari, you've got another thing coming!

What argues against the asteroid being only a few km or a few dozen km wide is the phaser attack on the asteroid to split it in two:



The twin beams leave the Enterprise and are widening out at approximately 23 degree offset angles as the go, the reverse shot perspective makes it look like they are coming back together and are disappearing from view just before impact. So we are dealing with a rock that is at least 100 km wide, and more like a few hundred.
-Mike

I would regard that as a quirk of the special effects, rather than evidence of anything in particular, though I suppose it could be useful if debating a Saxtonian.

Moff Tarquin wrote:It is a stretch to say that it's entirely composed of such materials, but it could easily have veins of tritanium running through it like a system of roots. They'd act like roots, and both anchor and support the ordinary rock surrounding them. As the asteroid is impacted by other asteroids on its trip through space, much of its surface gets blasted away by impact after impact, but those areas with veins of tritanium manage to hold together rather well thanks to the ridiculously tough framework. The tritanium framework would even hold up the lumps of normal rock against gravity, giving the surface of the asteroid a very bulbous appearance.

The result? Instead of a spherical body with craters left by previous impacts, we get a whole bunch of bulges. Exactly what we see in the visuals. Not that I consider that particularly important, as we shall see.

Maybe, it is also just as possible that the asteroid was created as a colossal joke by the Q. But just because those are possible, does not mean that is what is happening here. See, inflationism is inflationism, and it is just as bad whether it is Star Trek or Star Wars. Lack of craters? The remastered version does have craters. So which one do we take? Why go through all the trouble to do so when regardless, the feat by the Enterprise is still really damn impressive.

Moff Tarquin wrote:Even so, over a minute in time, we'd expect to have less than two degrees of rotation.

It would still be visible, and in both versions, we always see the exact same hemisphere of the asteroid.

Moff Tarquin wrote:But surely someone as anal-retentive as Spock (who corrects almost every approximate numerical value mentioned in his presence) wouldn't exaggerate the size of the asteroid by more than an order of magnitude?

From an in-universe standpoint, you'd be absolutely correct, but from a meta standpoint, we have to deal with the dialog possibly being wrong in this specific instance.

Moff Tarquin wrote:I guess it's the principle of the notion that irks me. You can't treat a made-up story like a documentary! Especially not one that relies on special effects to any degree. What we have in the special effects isn't "what the script called for," but rather, "the closest approximation to some technician's interpretation of what the script called for that could be achieved on said technician's budget." If we take seriously what Star Wars and Star Trek ACTUALLY ARE, we will recognize that lines delivered tend to be a very close approximation of an author's artistic vision, whereas any special effects are going to be rather less successful approximations of the same vision - and thus, we will assume that the former will be a rather more reliable guide to the events of the story than the latter.

To sum up my position succinctly: if you expect me to believe that the computer interface in an FTL capable spaceship could be compared unfavorably to that of an Atari, you've got another thing coming!

Well, and a lot of it later was done to inflate Star Wars, while minimizing Star Trek (along with a heaping helping of double standard application). So, for example, the literalist interpretation lead to the uber acceleration in Star Wars by ignoring the obvious jump cuts in the editing.

Moff Tarquin wrote:I would regard that as a quirk of the special effects, rather than evidence of anything in particular, though I suppose it could be useful if debating a Saxtonian.

Not really, it's the perspective, like looking down a railway track and watching how it seems like they go together off in the distance.
-Mike

Mike DiCenso wrote:

Moff Tarquin wrote:It is a stretch to say that it's entirely composed of such materials, but it could easily have veins of tritanium running through it like a system of roots. They'd act like roots, and both anchor and support the ordinary rock surrounding them. As the asteroid is impacted by other asteroids on its trip through space, much of its surface gets blasted away by impact after impact, but those areas with veins of tritanium manage to hold together rather well thanks to the ridiculously tough framework. The tritanium framework would even hold up the lumps of normal rock against gravity, giving the surface of the asteroid a very bulbous appearance.

The result? Instead of a spherical body with craters left by previous impacts, we get a whole bunch of bulges. Exactly what we see in the visuals. Not that I consider that particularly important, as we shall see.

Maybe, it is also just as possible that the asteroid was created as a colossal joke by the Q. But just because those are possible, does not mean that is what is happening here.

Well, we have two possibilities that would explain its anomalous appearance that are consistent with the large size implied by Spock:
1) Q did it.
2) Tritanium (or similar material) content.

In all probability there are more. The existence of a harmonization proves the possibility of a harmonization - and given our limited capacity to harmonize, it also implies the possibility of better, unknown harmonizations still out there.

See, inflationism is inflationism, and it is just as bad whether it is Star Trek or Star Wars. Lack of craters? The remastered version does have craters.

But it also still has a lumpy appearance, which would require something along the lines of what I've suggested.

It's even further from spherical than the original, so unless there's some rule about "new visuals beat old visuals," I'd say that the old one comes closer to depicting what the authors appear to have intended. If there is such a rule, then we rely further on a hypothesis like the "tritanium veins" hypothesis.

So which one do we take?

I would suggest that when you have two different versions of the visuals, you go with the one that best fits the dialogue. But that's just me.

Moff Tarquin wrote:Even so, over a minute in time, we'd expect to have less than two degrees of rotation.

It would still be visible, and in both versions, we always see the exact same hemisphere of the asteroid.

Point ceded.

Moff Tarquin wrote:But surely someone as anal-retentive as Spock (who corrects almost every approximate numerical value mentioned in his presence) wouldn't exaggerate the size of the asteroid by more than an order of magnitude?

From an in-universe standpoint, you'd be absolutely correct, but from a meta standpoint, we have to deal with the dialog possibly being wrong in this specific instance.

But if we accept anything even remotely like "documentarian" readings, there is no "meta." And if we do accept that this is just a story, then the dialogue is the primary thing we go to in order to determine goings-on "in-universe." Either way, we have an anal-retentive character with probable access to information regarding the size of the asteroid claiming that it is "almost as large as" earth's moon. Either we accept the doccumentarian reading, and recognize that there is very little room "in-universe" for Spock to be exaggerating or mistaken, or we go with the "meta" standpoint and recognize that Spock's lines are a tool used by the writer of the story to give us information about the story.

Moff Tarquin wrote:I guess it's the principle of the notion that irks me. You can't treat a made-up story like a documentary! Especially not one that relies on special effects to any degree. What we have in the special effects isn't "what the script called for," but rather, "the closest approximation to some technician's interpretation of what the script called for that could be achieved on said technician's budget." If we take seriously what Star Wars and Star Trek ACTUALLY ARE, we will recognize that lines delivered tend to be a very close approximation of an author's artistic vision, whereas any special effects are going to be rather less successful approximations of the same vision - and thus, we will assume that the former will be a rather more reliable guide to the events of the story than the latter.

To sum up my position succinctly: if you expect me to believe that the computer interface in an FTL capable spaceship could be compared unfavorably to that of an Atari, you've got another thing coming!

Well, and a lot of it later was done to inflate Star Wars, while minimizing Star Trek (along with a heaping helping of double standard application). So, for example, the literalist interpretation lead to the uber acceleration in Star Wars by ignoring the obvious jump cuts in the editing.

Abuses and double standards like those are what caused me to formulate my position in the first place. One of these days, I might post a summary in the "Rules of Evidence" section and see how it holds up.

Moff Tarquin wrote:I would regard that as a quirk of the special effects, rather than evidence of anything in particular, though I suppose it could be useful if debating a Saxtonian.

Not really, it's the perspective, like looking down a railway track and watching how it seems like they go together off in the distance.
-Mike

But train tracks are parallel. These phaser beams would be going off at angles. What's the maximum angle that can show such a "train track" effect?

Moff Tarquin wrote:Well, we have two possibilities that would explain its anomalous appearance that are consistent with the large size implied by Spock:
1) Q did it.
2) Tritanium (or similar material) content.

In all probability there are more. The existence of a harmonization proves the possibility of a harmonization - and given our limited capacity to harmonize, it also implies the possibility of better, unknown harmonizations still out there.

The problem, is that it is tough to "harmonize" this because writer Margret Armen got so much of the science botched up and the fx company didn't understand that what she was describing should have been portrayed as a big ugly Moon-like sphere which leaves you with "And a wizard did it" type of fantastical explanations.

Moff Tarquin wrote:But it also still has a lumpy appearance, which would require something along the lines of what I've suggested.

It's even further from spherical than the original, so unless there's some rule about "new visuals beat old visuals," I'd say that the old one comes closer to depicting what the authors appear to have intended. If there is such a rule, then we rely further on a hypothesis like the "tritanium veins" hypothesis.

Yes, it is more oblong than the original, but that is just more evidence that the asteroid is not the same density as our Moon, even if the long axis dimensions are nearly as wide as our Moon's diameter. As for policy, Paramount and CBS have not come to any new canon definitions where that is concerned, so either seems to be equally valid as choices. But lack of craters just means there is some sort of resurfacing going on which is wiping out craters, like on Pluto, Europa and other similar bodies.

Moff Tarquin wrote:But if we accept anything even remotely like "documentarian" readings, there is no "meta." And if we do accept that this is just a story, then the dialogue is the primary thing we go to in order to determine goings-on "in-universe." Either way, we have an anal-retentive character with probable access to information regarding the size of the asteroid claiming that it is "almost as large as" earth's moon. Either we accept the doccumentarian reading, and recognize that there is very little room "in-universe" for Spock to be exaggerating or mistaken, or we go with the "meta" standpoint and recognize that Spock's lines are a tool used by the writer of the story to give us information about the story.

That Spock is that way as a person in-universe is all correct, but we have to look at it from a meta perspective, otherwise any hope of analysis falls apart. In this case, just as I cited with the "ship will burn up!" dialog contradictions, we have accept that Spock really said or meant something else, and then go on from there. See again my bit about the TPS asteroid having a low density, but large volume, and s Spock can still be "right" after all.

Moff Tarquin wrote:Abuses and double standards like those are what caused me to formulate my position in the first place. One of these days, I might post a summary in the "Rules of Evidence" section and see how it holds up.

Back in the old UseNet ASVS days, that sort of thing was codified and carried over to SDN, and Brian Young used it for his BabTech site as well as his current SciFights website, but other places are less likely to follow that as a hard and fast rule outside of the still Warsie dominated SpaceBattles.com. Here we're a bit looser about it seeing what an extremely obtuse philosophy it is, and precisely because it is primed for abuse.

Moff Tarquin wrote:But train tracks are parallel. These phaser beams would be going off at angles. What's the maximum angle that can show such a "train track" effect?

In the remastered version, they make the phasers leave the ship much more in parallel with each other, but in either case, it means the Enterprise is much further away than it visually appears they are, and thus even though the beans may be targeting an away and hitting many km apart, they look as though they are coming together.
-Mike

Mike DiCenso wrote:

Moff Tarquin wrote:Well, we have two possibilities that would explain its anomalous appearance that are consistent with the large size implied by Spock:
1) Q did it.
2) Tritanium (or similar material) content.

In all probability there are more. The existence of a harmonization proves the possibility of a harmonization - and given our limited capacity to harmonize, it also implies the possibility of better, unknown harmonizations still out there.

The problem, is that it is tough to "harmonize" this because writer Margret Armen got so much of the science botched up and the fx company didn't understand that what she was describing should have been portrayed as a big ugly Moon-like sphere which leaves you with "And a wizard did it" type of fantastical explanations.

"Tritanium content" = "And a wizard did it?"

Moff Tarquin wrote:But it also still has a lumpy appearance, which would require something along the lines of what I've suggested.

It's even further from spherical than the original, so unless there's some rule about "new visuals beat old visuals," I'd say that the old one comes closer to depicting what the authors appear to have intended. If there is such a rule, then we rely further on a hypothesis like the "tritanium veins" hypothesis.

Yes, it is more oblong than the original, but that is just more evidence that the asteroid is not the same density as our Moon, even if the long axis dimensions are nearly as wide as our Moon's diameter.

The asteroid appears to be visibly rotating in several shots - this is particularly obvious prior to their firing the first deflector beam. Take another look at the special effects reel you showed me.

Moff Tarquin wrote:But if we accept anything even remotely like "documentarian" readings, there is no "meta." And if we do accept that this is just a story, then the dialogue is the primary thing we go to in order to determine goings-on "in-universe." Either way, we have an anal-retentive character with probable access to information regarding the size of the asteroid claiming that it is "almost as large as" earth's moon. Either we accept the doccumentarian reading, and recognize that there is very little room "in-universe" for Spock to be exaggerating or mistaken, or we go with the "meta" standpoint and recognize that Spock's lines are a tool used by the writer of the story to give us information about the story.

That Spock is that way as a person in-universe is all correct, but we have to look at it from a meta perspective, otherwise any hope of analysis falls apart.

I think that you and I might mean different things by "meta." Care to clarify?

In this case, just as I cited with the "ship will burn up!" dialog contradictions, we have accept that Spock really said or meant something else, and then go on from there.

By the time they entered the stratosphere, the hull was only 2170 degrees. Clearly, "burning up" is the direction in which the ship was headed (assuming an earth-like atmosphere, they had at least forty kilometers of atmosphere to go through), but the ship wasn't burning yet. All we can really infer is that temperatures of 2170 degrees won't char the hull.

See again my bit about the TPS asteroid having a low density, but large volume, and s Spock can still be "right" after all.

Or rotating visibly.

Moff Tarquin wrote:Abuses and double standards like those are what caused me to formulate my position in the first place. One of these days, I might post a summary in the "Rules of Evidence" section and see how it holds up.

Back in the old UseNet ASVS days, that sort of thing was codified and carried over to SDN, and Brian Young used it for his BabTech site as well as his current SciFights website, but other places are less likely to follow that as a hard and fast rule outside of the still Warsie dominated SpaceBattles.com. Here we're a bit looser about it seeing what an extremely obtuse philosophy it is, and precisely because it is primed for abuse.

What other vs sites are there other than this on, SDN, and SpaceBattles?

Moff Tarquin wrote: What other vs sites are there other than this on, SDN, and SpaceBattles?

There's ASVS (the current forum), which is rather... dead lately (though we're looking for new ways to revive it. Heyday was 2009 to 2013). We're currently trying a dedicated RP forum to get people interested. (This ASVS being a revival of the Old Usenet ASVS - standing for alt.startrek.vs.starwars. Also, I'm an admin there, which is why I say "we".)

Then, there's FactPile, which, while it was Warsie-dominated in the past, has switched positions, and Star Trek defeated Star Wars there, winning the "FactPile Award" - I'd like to give thanks to my brother for that victory.

There's DarkStar's "ST-v-SW.net", but I assume you know of that.

There was also the late TFC - "Trek Wars: The Furry Conflict", which was... exactly what it says on the tin. Still, they had some pretty good technical analyses.

Electric Ferret... is FUBAR. Namely, they have a character selection sheet, and you choose which characters are in a fight, and people vote on it. This has lead to some great fights (Leviathan vs. Cthulhu, anyone?), and some.... not-so-great ones (Benjamin Franklin vs. Trogdor the Burninator and Hulk Hogan vs. Spinosaurus both come to mind - though they're still better than a lot of the shit that gets posted on Spacebattles). Also, Shao Khan was their whipping boy. As in, whenever he was in a fight, everyone would vote against him to get him to lose. Even the Red-Shirted Ensigns managed to defeat him.

There are probably a few more here and there, but nothing I can recall.

Moff Tarquin wrote:"Tritanium content" = "And a wizard did it?"

Because it requires a little too much of a stretch to say that every asteroid our heroes encounter has tritanium or other unobtainium ficitional substances in it. We are trying to explain things away by invoking what amounts to magic, not science. The simplest explanation is often the best one and that is that the asteroid is smaller and less dense, not made of strange magic materials.

Moff Tarquin wrote:The asteroid appears to be visibly rotating in several shots - this is particularly obvious prior to their firing the first deflector beam. Take another look at the special effects reel you showed me.

Only maybe very slowly and not in a matter of mere hours.

Moff Tarquin wrote:I think that you and I might mean different things by "meta." Care to clarify?

Meta as in out of universe perspective. We as viewers know that it is a fictional story and thus literal interpretation will just lead to a big headache trying to explain away such a nonsensical statement that is likely contradicted by visuals. Thus it is easier to dismiss what is said and move on with a better explanation that fits the facts.

Moff Tarquin wrote:By the time they entered the stratosphere, the hull was only 2170 degrees. Clearly, "burning up" is the direction in which the ship was headed (assuming an earth-like atmosphere, they had at least forty kilometers of atmosphere to go through), but the ship wasn't burning yet. All we can really infer is that temperatures of 2170 degrees won't char the hull.

If that is 2,170 degrees centigrade, it enough to not only melt steel, but make it boil. Even a reusable spaceship, like the Space Shuttle orbiters, showed the effects of heating (carbon scoring, ablated gap filler streaks, etc) on the tiles, blankets, and reinforced carbon-carbon wing panels after just one flight. There is literally no visible change to the hull whatsoever. In Star Trek Into Darkness, the Alt-prise survives quite well despite being out of control (no power) and heavily damaged. We cannot always take characters at their literal word, and you cannot reconcile the Alt-prise's survival with Sulu's statement. Hyperbole is sometimes the only explanation, if any, in cases like this.

Moff Tarquin wrote:Or rotating visibly.

Not near enough to explain the oblate shape. Unless it's a very low-density object....

Moff Tarquin wrote:What other vs sites are there other than this on, SDN, and SpaceBattles?

What Khas mentioned. Sadly, lots of websites and forums, like Strek-v-Swars.net are long gone. Starfleet Jedi.net is a rare survivor indeed of that time period.
-Mike

Mike DiCenso wrote:

Moff Tarquin wrote:"Tritanium content" = "And a wizard did it?"

Because it requires a little too much of a stretch to say that every asteroid our heroes encounter has tritanium or other unobtainium ficitional substances in it. We are trying to explain things away by invoking what amounts to magic, not science. The simplest explanation is often the best one and that is that the asteroid is smaller and less dense, not made of strange magic materials.

I wouldn't say that the asteroid in, say, Rise had to be made of anything special. Just this one. Why? Because it's "almost the size of Earth's moon" and isn't a perfect sphere. It would have to be less dense than water to be comparable to Earth's moon in linear dimensions and have that shape.

Moff Tarquin wrote:The asteroid appears to be visibly rotating in several shots - this is particularly obvious prior to their firing the first deflector beam. Take another look at the special effects reel you showed me.

Only maybe very slowly and not in a matter of mere hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XP0ijkha4s
When you first look at it at 0:23 as the Enterprise approaches, it looks like it's pointing towards eleven-o-clock. Later, when they bring it up on the viewscreen at 0:27, it looks like it's somewhere between eleven-o-clock and noon (to me, as they approach the asteroid, it looks like it rotates visibly from that position to noon, period, but that might just be an effect of the quality). Later still, when they're firing the deflector beam at 0:37, it looks like it's pointing nearly to one o clock. By the time they fire the phasers, it looks to be pointing at two-o-clock. Long story short, it's pointing at a different angle in every shot, and in several shots, appears to be visibly rotating.

Moff Tarquin wrote:I think that you and I might mean different things by "meta." Care to clarify?

Meta as in out of universe perspective. We as viewers know that it is a fictional story and thus literal interpretation will just lead to a big headache trying to explain away such a nonsensical statement that is likely contradicted by visuals. Thus it is easier to dismiss what is said and move on with a better explanation that fits the facts.

What's nonsensical about it, other than its "contradiction" with the visuals?

And why should contradiction with the visuals matter when, from a meta perspective, they aren't a direct vehicle of the storyteller's vision (as the dialogue IS), but are rather a vehicle of the storyteller's vision filtered through "what Bob the special effects tech could afford," "what Bob the special effects tech thought an asteroid the size of earth's moon would look like," and "what Bob the special effects tech thought would look cool" ?

It is the latter point that most needs to be addressed. If we're going to take the meta perspective, then we should only rely on visuals to augment what is established in dialogue, or to come to conclusions when no relevant pieces of dialogue are available, for the simple reason that the visuals are constrained by budget and motivated by "what looks cool" rather than "what it would really look like."

Moff Tarquin wrote:By the time they entered the stratosphere, the hull was only 2170 degrees. Clearly, "burning up" is the direction in which the ship was headed (assuming an earth-like atmosphere, they had at least forty kilometers of atmosphere to go through), but the ship wasn't burning yet. All we can really infer is that temperatures of 2170 degrees won't char the hull.

If that is 2,170 degrees centigrade, it enough to not only melt steel, but make it boil.

And yet, a mere century later, temperatures ten thousand degrees higher won't even cause a starship hull to glow.

Even a reusable spaceship, like the Space Shuttle orbiters, showed the effects of heating (carbon scoring, ablated gap filler streaks, etc) on the tiles, blankets, and reinforced carbon-carbon wing panels after just one flight. There is literally no visible change to the hull whatsoever.

Why would we expect one when we know that starship hull materials are capable of withstanding many thousands of degrees without even glowing? This isn't steel, carbon, or anything like that. This is duranium, tritanium, or something comparably durable - in short, something far beyond current materials science.

In Star Trek Into Darkness, the Alt-prise survives quite well despite being out of control (no power) and heavily damaged. We cannot always take characters at their literal word, and you cannot reconcile the Alt-prise's survival with Sulu's statement. Hyperbole is sometimes the only explanation, if any, in cases like this.

I'd have to see that movie again, and hear Sulu's lines again, to be able to come up with any kind of explanation.

Moff Tarquin wrote:Or rotating visibly.

Not near enough to explain the oblate shape. Unless it's a very low-density object....

It's at a different position every shot, we never see it for more than five seconds before cutting to the next shot, and in at least one shot, it looks to me like we can see it changing orientation.

Moff Tarquin wrote:
Mike DiCenso wrote:

Moff Tarquin wrote:
"Tritanium content" = "And a wizard did it?"

Because it requires a little too much of a stretch to say that every asteroid our heroes encounter has tritanium or other unobtainium ficitional substances in it. We are trying to explain things away by invoking what amounts to magic, not science. The simplest explanation is often the best one and that is that the asteroid is smaller and less dense, not made of strange magic materials.

I wouldn't say that the asteroid in, say, Rise had to be made of anything special. Just this one. Why? Because it's "almost the size of Earth's moon" and isn't a perfect sphere. It would have to be less dense than water to be comparable to Earth's moon in linear dimensions and have that shape.

No, it was. It became a major plot point, in fact, where as in TPS, such a thing was never mentioned (a line or two about that would have been great in explaining why the phasers weren't effective in splitting it two). "Rise" calculations assume the asteroid is conventional nickel-iron composition, like the heroes did, never actually take into account the mysterious alloy it was later found out to be, or the oviline, but it helps in providing a good, clear idea of what might have happened, if the asteroid was made of what was expected (mostly vaporization, a tiny amount of cm-sized fragments).

Moff Tarquin wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XP0ijkha4s When you first look at it at 0:23 as the Enterprise approaches, it looks like it's pointing towards eleven-o-clock. Later, when they bring it up on the viewscreen at 0:27, it looks like it's somewhere between eleven-o-clock and noon (to me, as they approach the asteroid, it looks like it rotates visibly from that position to noon, period, but that might just be an effect of the quality). Later still, when they're firing the deflector beam at 0:37, it looks like it's pointing nearly to one o clock. By the time they fire the phasers, it looks to be pointing at two-o-clock. Long story short, it's pointing at a different angle in every shot, and in several shots, appears to be visibly rotating.

I'm not seeing all that much rotation, just a lot of different angles due to the fact that the camera is shifting locations, and doing funky things, like zooming past the Enterprise and towards the big rock. For the most part, there is not near enough evidence to indicate a rotation that would make the asteroid oblate in shape, as your earlier example of Haumea does. But it doesn't help your case much, even if that is so, since while you might have a linearly Moon-sized object, the high spin rate causing oblate shape would point towards a relatively low-density body.

Moff Tarquin wrote:What's nonsensical about it, other than its "contradiction" with the visuals?

And why should contradiction with the visuals matter when, from a meta perspective, they aren't a direct vehicle of the storyteller's vision (as the dialogue IS), but are rather a vehicle of the storyteller's vision filtered through "what Bob the special effects tech could afford," "what Bob the special effects tech thought an asteroid the size of earth's moon would look like," and "what Bob the special effects tech thought would look cool" ?

It is the latter point that most needs to be addressed. If we're going to take the meta perspective, then we should only rely on visuals to augment what is established in dialogue, or to come to conclusions when no relevant pieces of dialogue are available, for the simple reason that the visuals are constrained by budget and motivated by "what looks cool" rather than "what it would really look like.

Good question, and that little matter hasn't been settled. Some people do not rely on special effects and others do for a variety of reasons (see my bit earlier about the Warsies and Saxtonites usage). But in those camps that look at both as methods of story narrative (otherwise this would be a radio show, not live action TV!), one or the other is wrong. A Moon-sized asteroid? Is it Moon-sized? Can it still be called an asteroid? Why doesn't Spock properly calling it a "rogue planet"? Is Spock, for the sake of saving time using hyperbole to get his point across to the overly emotional, and space sciences illiterate McCoy? If you place more stock in the author, then the FX are wrong and they should have shown a big spherical planet-like thing. But the author uses incorrect terminology for such a large body, and so isn't she wrong, and therefore the FX wins out?

And how do you reconcile this with the more powerful E-D being unable to push an asteroidal moon in "Deja Q"? Same universe and timeline and all.

Moff Tarquin wrote:And yet, a mere century later, temperatures ten thousand degrees higher won't even cause a starship hull to glow.

We never saw the outside hull of the Enterprise in "The Naked Time", but we do see that red-hot plasma does form around the leading edges of starships at a few thousand degrees C in "The Arsenal of Freedom", "Deja Q", and "ST: Generations". But getting back to the point, the Enterprise at the end of TNN is just fine, as if nothing had ever happened.

Moff Tarquin wrote:Why would we expect one when we know that starship hull materials are capable of withstanding many thousands of degrees without even glowing? This isn't steel, carbon, or anything like that. This is duranium, tritanium, or something comparably durable - in short, something far beyond current materials science.

Exactly my point. Why would the ship ever be in danger of burning up? Wouldn't it just crash into the planet, like in Generations, or STID? The characters were wrong. Kirk in TNN and Sulu in STID. There's just nothing to say or do about it. And that gets to the next point...

Moff Tarquin wrote:I'd have to see that movie again, and hear Sulu's lines again, to be able to come up with any kind of explanation.

No need. By the power of YouTube I give you this. He says it around 1:37.

Moff Tarquin wrote:It's at a different position every shot, we never see it for more than five seconds before cutting to the next shot, and in at least one shot, it looks to me like we can see it changing orientation.

We see it that way largely because of changing camera angles, and what little, if any rotation there there might be, is over many hours.
-Mike